Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit is a troll series. It trolled me so hard. Animated by Production I.G. and directed by Kenji Kamiyama I figured this was going to be the next series that made me scream, “ZOMG THIS SHOW IS FUCKING AWESOME!” And yeah, it started out that way.
Moribito starts with a bang. After all, coming from a legendary animation company, and the director of the amazing Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, how could it go wrong? The first three episodes were amazing. Not only did they feature stunning, fluid animation, they had perfect pacing, an intriguing mystery, and fantastic action sequences. After a number of exciting battles, the fourth episode slowed down to give us some exposition.
Exposition is all fine and good, but the problem is that the rest of the series was nothing but exposition. There was no more action. That’s it. Only three episodes worth, and they blew their wad from the get-go. The remaining 23(!!!!!) episodes are a non-stop thrill ride of talking, staring pensively toward the horizon, meditating, running away from danger, more talking, doing research, boiling water, and still more talking. It was fucking ridiculous. In fact, now that I think about it, this was completely intentional.